


A Space to Breathe

by Beth Winter (BethWinter)



Category: Empress of Forever - Max Gladstone
Genre: Day At The Beach, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:28:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21834439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethWinter/pseuds/Beth%20Winter
Summary: Between the last adventure and the next, Viv wants to think and Zanj wants to talk.
Relationships: Vivian Chao & Zanj
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Space to Breathe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shadaras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/gifts).



"Is the point of vacations to get bored enough that a return to your usual life feels like a relief?"

Viv grinned, her eyes still closed against the planet's red sun. "They give you space to think."

"Just lying there?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes I'd sail, or explore, or spend time doing work completely different from my own. But lying there is all right, for a day or two."

Zanj snorted, scuffing her feet in the blue sand as she paced. Her footsteps fell into an odd melody with the hum of the waves and the whisper of wind.

Viv carefully didn't point out that Zanj, crownless, healed, was free to go elsewhere. Pasquarai, torn and rebuilding, full of people who wore the faces of her friends. Orn, raising its spires from ashes with a new fleet, Xiara's hands full while the Ornchief recovered. A million other worlds to steal, to discover, but never to rule.

Instead, Zanj sat heavily on the sand. Something crunched: shells in her hand. Viv reached out blindly and touched springy fur.

That earned her a wordless grumble, more scuffing as Zanj stretched out on the warm sand. "Thinking too much is overrated."

"Especially when you can blow people up instead."

"Fuck you."

Viv ran her fingers over the curve of Zanj's shoulder, up to her neck.

"Best ideas are the quick ones. You know what to do or you don't."

"That's the way you fight," Viv agreed.

"That's the way I win."

Viv didn't mention High Carcereal either. She could see how millennia with nothing else to do would put you off contemplation.

Zanj shifted, stretching out. "They have to sort themselves out. Solving people's problems for them is how you end up like-"

"Me,"Viv agreed. She was still coming to terms with that, with time enough to internalize the other Vivian Chao in her green and burning flesh. "I don't think there's a danger of that."

"One of me did."

The Queen, who had and hadn't been Zanj in a way that made Viv think of mirrors and literary theory and the way she could really be a vindictive bitch sometimes.

"You move forward," Zanj said. "That's the way I do it. Moving forward. I see a problem, I solve it, and the rest is up to their own choices. I won't tell them what to do. That's how you get slaves."

"That's how you get stagnation."

"That, too."Zanj's voice held teeth. "We changed things up pretty good."

Viv kept her eyes closed, the sun painting the insides of her eyelids in red networks of blood vessels, so Zanj's movement was just sound and intensifying scent, and fur moving under her fingers until a jaw rested on her shoulder.

"There'll be new people rising," Zanj said. "Someone needs to give the orders. They'll get power, and power twists people. So I'll stick around."

"To put the fear of Zanj into them?"

"Everyone needs a kick in the head sometimes."

Viv filed the remark that this plan made Zanj's function one of international oversight into the catalogue of things she would not say to avoid getting kicked in the head herself.

"In the meantime, there are millennia of new civilisations I haven't been around for," Zanj mused. "I want to steal something big."

"Bigger than the Empress?"

A laugh brushed past the small hairs on her arm. "I think we stole each other."

"Or Hong stole both of us."

"Nah. You stole him." A sharp nail poked the inside of her elbow. "You stole me, Hong, Xiara, Grey and three fleets. So I have to steal something really big to be the best thief again."

"I'm looking forward to it."

"I'm thinking a galaxy."

Viv smiled. "Do you want a hand with that?"

Zanj hummed for a moment, shifting again on the sand. The weight of her head on Viv's shoulder disappeared. "I could use a sidekick."

"A mastermind, you mean."

"Sidekick."

"Eminence grise?"

"Gray'd take offense to that."

Viv remembered strategizing online raids in college, and a few times later, when real world takeovers got too much. "Grey's a tank anyway. Absorbing damage."

"Hey, I absorb damage."

"You're too good at dealing it out, you're a fighter. I'm a…" She frowned. "Fuck, I'm a bard."

"What?"

"I get by on my tongue and convincing people and telling the right kind of stories. Bard."

Suddenly her face was shadowed. She opened her eyes to the sight of Zanj frowning at her from about three inches away.

"Too much sun, Los Angeles."

Viv reached over her own head, bracing her arms against the sand. She jumped to her feet in a motion half-remembered from martial arts practice. Zanj got out of the way just in time to avoid concussion and frowned up at her when Viv reached down, but took her hand to rise.

"We've got at least a month until Xiara's free to join us," Viv said. "A lot of time to plan."

"Planning's all right," Zanj allowed. "Sometimes you need logistics."

"Resources, at least. We're taking Grey, too. Might need a few more people."

Zanj's eyes flashed with sudden hope. "And that means no more vacation?"

"Planning can happen on vacation."

"At least no more frying your brains out in the sun. There has to be something better to do on vacation."

Viv looked around the blue beach and the pink waves that rolled in from the direction of the setting sun. There were small dots circling above, local carrion-eating insects with fangs as big as her arm, and flashes of slightly friendlier fauna in the sea.

"We could build sand castles?" She waited until Zanj rolled her eyes three times. "Or we could swim."

Viv got all of two steps of a running start before Zanj caught her and tossed her a good twenty meters into the surf. The pink sea tasted the way it smelled, of tarragon and liquorice and complicated plots with half a chance in hell of success.

In the end, they stole two galaxies.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Shadaras for the chance to play in this universe! I tried writing an adventure, but instead it's Zanj and Viv finally getting a chance to talk quietly, as much as possible for two people who are champions at not discussing their emotions. They turned a little meta on me...


End file.
